Research
Latest research from Melbourne Business Centre for School Social Purpose Organisations.
Our Research
A core objective of our Centre is to create practice-relevant, evidence-based research. Our approach is to be both academically rigorous and at the same time practical – developing insights, tools and resources to support the work of social purpose organisations.
An over-arching theme of our Centre’s research is understanding and evidencing when and how conventional profit-maximising business management principles apply in the context of social purpose organisations, and when these principles need to be adapted for organisations that have a primary goal of sustainability maximising social value creation.
The Australian Not-for-Profit Strategic Decision-Making Research Program
Australia’s first national study of strategic decision-making in NFPs, developing evidence-based tools and frameworks for sector leaders.
The Australian Not for Profit (NFP) Strategic Issues and Decision-Making Study the first ever national study of strategic issues and decision-making in charitable NFPs.
This Study addresses a critical knowledge gap: a growing body of knowledge examining strategic issue management and decision-making in for-profit organisations, and a lack of evidence-based knowledge about how NFPs navigate these same challenges.
Our research builds on other recent studies of Australia’s NFP sector, including the Not-for-Profit Sector Development Blueprint (2024), the Centre for Social Impact’s State of the Social Economy in Australia Report (2025), and the AICD’s NFP Governance and Performance Study (2026).
These works identify system-level challenges, changes and policy reform agendas.
However, there remains an absence of granular, evidence-based knowledge about how NFP senior leaders identify, interpret, and respond to the strategic issues their organisations face.
Our aim is to develop evidence-based, context-relevant strategic decision-making tools and frameworks for use by the sector.
Read more about the 2026 Australian NFP Strategic Issues and Decision-Making Study:
https://mbs.edu/news/australian-not-for-profit-strategic-issues-and-decision-making-study
The Impact Costs of Work Integration Social Enterprises Research Program
Research into Impact Costs in Work Integration Social Enterprises, informing policy, funding and organisational sustainability.
Work Integration Social Enterprises are they largest group of social enterprises in Australia and internationally. They exist to create jobs for people facing employment barriers, which they do through the sale of goods and services. Therefore, Work Integration Social Enterprises are characterised by both social-impact and commercial production. Unlike their commercial counterparts, Work Integration Social Enterprises incur costs associated with their impact production activities, which are called ‘Impact Costs’.
This long-term program of research is focused on working with Work Integration Social Enterprises to identify, quantify, understand and communicate their Impact Costs. To date, our research has identified 11 different Impact Cost Categories that Work Integration Social Enterprises commonly incur, which we have used to build a do-it-yourself tool in Excel format. This work has already attracted interest from the sector, philanthropic funders, impact investors and governments. A significant outcome from our Impact Costs research is the finding that for Work Integration Social Enterprises, Impact Costs are predominantly variable in nature. This means that economies of scale are not a mechanism for increasing financial sustainability of these organisations – an assumption that previously was commonly accepted throughout the social enterprise ecosystem in Australia.
In our next phase of this research, we are building our Impact Costs Tool as a web application, with the support of the Westpac Foundation and the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
This tool will be freely available to social enterprises and will also be used to generate important data about how Impact Costs manifest, to guide future policy and practice.
Read more about our Impact Costs work:
Our research will focus on understanding the impact of the SELF as well as capturing the experience of the Fund’s backers, who include the Westpac Foundation, Macquarie Group Foundation, the Australian Government, Victorian Government, the Ian & Shirley Norman Foundation and the English Family Foundation.
Ultimately, we aim to inform the further development of social financing initiatives for employment-focused social enterprises across Australia.
The Australian Social Enterprise Loan Fund Study
Evaluating Australia’s first social enterprise loan fund to improve access to finance and support employment-focused social enterprises.
The Centre for Social Purpose Organisations is working with White Box Enterprises and White Box Finance to undertake longitudinal research and evaluation (2026 – 2029) of their innovative Social Enterprise Loan Fund (SELF).
Launched in 2025, the SELF is Australia’s first loan fund specifically designed for social enterprises supporting employment pathways, to address the access to capital challenges that these organisations face. Access to affordable, appropriately structured social finance is a huge issue for Australian social enterprises.